As North Korea called President Trump a “war merchant and strangler of peace,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson insisted Sunday the ​commander in chief​’s first priority is to​ ​continue working on a diplomatic solution “until the first bomb drops.”​

“He has made it clear to me to continue my diplomatic efforts . . . until the first bomb drops.”

​US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley echoed Tillerson’s comments and said the administration would be willing to talk if the rogue regime ​vows to immediately curtail its testing of nuclear weapons.

“We’re not going to beg them to come to the negotiating table,” Haley told ABC’s “This Week.” “We’re not going to try and win them over with incentives and things like that. We need them to stop nuclear testing, and we need that to stop right away.”

Until then, Haley, said “there’s no conversation that needs to be had.”

​Even as the US pursues diplomatic angles, it continues to prepare for the worst.

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the president would do whatever is necessary to prevent an attack from North Korea on the United States.

“Our president has been really clear: He’s not going to permit this regime and Kim Jong-un to threaten the United States with a nuclear weapon,” McMaster said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“He’s going to do anything necessary to prevent that from happening, and what Kim Jong-un should recognize is that if he thinks the development of this nuclear capability is keeping him safer, it’s actually the opposite,” McMaster added.

​North Korea has been increasing its military bellicosity with the United States, test-firing intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the US mainland and detonating a nuclear device.​

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​Still, the regime said Trump is trying to bring the world to the “brink of war.”

“Trump called ​​for total destruction of our state and people at the UN arena, and continues to bring nuclear strategic assets into South Korea and its vicinity, pushing the situation on the peninsula to the brink of war,” said a commentary from the state newspaper Rodong Sinmun, posted by the Korean Central News Agency, according to CNN.

The war​-​mongering comments come as Trump has publicly rebuked Tillerson’s efforts to open lines of communication with North Korea.

Tillerson is “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Trump tweeted on Oct. 1, adding the United States will “do what has to be done!”

Tillerson acknowledged on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that people may be “challenged” to understand an “unconventional” president and the appearance of “disunity.”

But he said there’s “no confusion among the people that matter” in how to forge diplomacy with North Korea.

“The president’s a very unconventional person, as we all know, in terms of how he communicates, how he likes to create action-forcing events,” Tillerson said in explaining Trump’s tweets.

“And so the president often takes steps to force an action when he feels things are just not moving.”